


The Cruelest of Things

by ieroses



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, Grief/Mourning, Hallucinations, M/M, Madness, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-11
Updated: 2015-03-11
Packaged: 2018-03-17 10:54:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3526592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ieroses/pseuds/ieroses
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock comes back after the fall, only to discover that John has died.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Cruelest of Things

**Author's Note:**

> Written (in an attempt to pound through a bout of writing block) as a fill for [this prompt on the kinkmeme.](http://sherlockbbc-fic.livejournal.com/22636.html?thread=133204332#t133204332)
> 
> Please be aware that I take gleeful liberties with the realistic timeline of The Empty Hearse (meaning I pay it no attention what-so-ever oops)
> 
> Inspo song: Nightclothes - Radical Face
> 
> As usual, sorry for any errors - I am my own attempt at a beta.

Surprisingly, the sun rose the morning after, and blue sky refused to grey. 

 

Cold dusted the grass bank with flecks of frost, robins tweeted buried inside the sparse webs of bushes, and silence hung over the country road. The night had passed, and with it the screech of breaks and steam of rubber failing to grip. 

 

You would be forgiven for failing to notice it: the memory of blood, a small stain shadowing a single patch of concrete.

 

*

 

The funeral was busy with sadness and hushed tones. 

 

Mrs Hudson shivered in tears beneath the bare branches of the oak tree. With one arm wrapped around the elderly woman’s shoulders, Molly stared at the black stone reading _Sherlock Holmes_ and willed the anger beneath her heart to cease for a few moments, just long enough to let her grieve the friend she thought would survive. 

 

Surrounding them a small crowd of subdued soldiers and old doctors, both memories from past lives alike, shook their heads and lamented their choices not to give the man a call for a drink, after the whole business with Richard Brook was dusted under the rug. 

 

The sun still shone, and at the gates of the cemetery a man stood, ringing the foot of his umbrella into the soggy grass as his fingers fiddled with the un-rung mobile heavy in his hands. 

 

*

 

2,000 miles away, Russia, and a man pulled a muscle in his leg as he ran from the guns following his shadowed back. The trees parted for him, revealing the route to freedom. 

 

The henchman behind were nothing, mere twitching fingers at the points ending arms cut from the spider’s body. Gone was the head, gone were the arms; almost halfway through, he thought, as he tumbled into the waiting truck. 

 

The agents pulled him inside as the vehicle sped away, and the man collapsed against the metal floor, adrenaline pumping through his veins and laughter ghosting through his thoughts as he settled into brief respite:

 

_That was the most ridiculous thing I have ever done._

 

*

 

No one forgot, but no one dwelled either. 

 

Two years later and Greg Lestrade was lifting an almost-empty pint to his mouth when he realised _oh, it was today._

 

He spared a moment of thought for the old doctor, and then wondered home, half stumbling, and fell into bed with few thoughts and little trouble. 

 

Across the city Molly had stopped praying for forgiveness. She sat at a dinner table in Covent Gardens, and across from her a man pulled out a ring and she grinned out a ‘yes’. His hair was a good kind of red, and did not make her think of the doctor she betrayed, nor the detective who made her do so. 

 

No one goes to leave flowers at the two graves, sat side by side, where the one skeleton lies lonely and alive only in the dreams of the other, finally flying back to a home without a heart. 

 

*

 

“And what about John Watson?” asked Sherlock, straightening out the cuffs of his shirt.

 

He turned to his brother, expecting an exasperated sigh and a look to the heavens for patience, lamenting his brothers sentimental attachment. 

 

Mycroft picked an imaginary stray thread from the sleeve of his jacket, his mouth pinched. 

 

 Sherlock felt his blood go cold and his skin go tight and loose at the same time in all the wrong places. The new suit carved against his bones and stiff cotton rested over fresh scars all weighted too much on his muscles. 

 

He growled and tightened his hands into fists to ignore the paranoid instincts taking over his body. He feigned exasperation and sighed, “What about John?”

 

Mycroft stared at a scratch on the stone floor where his desk had been shifted. “I - “ he started, and Sherlock began to really panic, because his brother was never lost for words. 

 

“I didn’t want you to get distracted.”

 

*

 

Baker Street was full of shadows, ghosts and cold. 

 

Sherlock ran his forefinger through the sheet of dust on the desk, movements slow and considered.

 

_Well, this could be very nice,_ said the voice in his head. 

 

Sherlock closed his hand into a fist, crushed his eyes shut, and tried to breathe through the collapsing of his chest. 

 

Afterward, he cleaned. 

 

*

 

“Oh, you’ve tidied up then,” said Mrs Hudson the next time she brought up tea, “That’s good. It all looks much better now, don’t you think?” 

 

Sherlock slid his praying fingers along his cracked lips and tried not to be too obvious about his glaring. The surfaces were too shiny without their dust, and Mrs Hudson was smiling too much, entirely too okay. 

 

Later, Mrs Hudson will come upstairs and collect the mug, tea cold and untouched. 

 

Sherlock will have closed his eyes, and in the cloudy night, the wooden surfaces did not shine. 

 

*

 

_Back burning, muscles aching, and chains cold around his wrists. His hair is knotted, but not yet long enough to hang in his eyes and disrupt his vision._

 

_Which is good, because, oh, what a vision it is._

 

_The European torturer is gone for now, leaving his prisoner to tread the waters of his pain. He doesn’t have the faintest idea of the gift he has granted._

 

_“What have you gotten yourself into now?” says John, leaning back against the wall, arms crossed over his chest, smile biting at his mouth._

 

_Sherlock thinks he shrugs, but he couldn’t say - his receptors seem to have failed his muscles. It’s okay; John understands. John is here to make it better._

 

_“You idiot,” says John, closer and so so real. He presses his hand against Sherlock’s cheek, and though this vision has happened time and time again, the touch is new. Sherlock’s heart flutters with it - either that or a heart attack._

 

_Sherlock closes his eyes, but the vision stays tattooed to the shades of his lids._

 

_“Come back to me,” says John._

 

_And Sherlock answers, “I will.”_

 

_*_

 

“You wanted to bring Moriarty down,” Mycroft reminded Sherlock, again, voice low and eyes glaring. Inside, Sherlock smiled; Mycroft was getting emotional, Mycroft cared. Mycroft knew he’d fucked up. 

 

Outside, Sherlock stayed static, legs crossed and eyes unmoving. “Yes, but it wasn’t worth this.”

 

“Worth what?” asked Mycroft, but Sherlock stayed silent for another few weeks. 

 

*

 

Lestrade smiled when Sherlock came to help, and so Sherlock studied the fake crime scene with rapt fascination and interest so as to smother the urge to beat the man bloody. 

 

He was aware of Molly following behind with odd comments somewhere in his head, but most of his brain was full of echoing space. The deductions bounced off the wall, loud and useless, and then 

 

_show off._

 

Sherlock shook out his head, and succeeded in sending echoes of the voice through the empty corridors of his mind.

 

The picture of the truth was building up, but it lacked the thrill of success, the excitement and pride of a new case which came from even simple ones such as these.

 

“This going to be your… new arrangement then, is it?” murmured Lestrade, eyeing Molly, and Sherlock’s blood rang with possibility; how easy it would be, how simple, how quick just to snap a man’s neck. It was, after all, nothing he’d never done before. 

 

“Just trying it out,” he answered instead. 

 

The room was too small, the smells too strong, and in his head _jealous?_

 

“Shut up,” he growled, because it hurt and Sherlock Holmes did not do hurt. 

 

He felt the peculiar looks flashing over him from his two old friends, and eventually he could not stand it. The case had been solved, the whole thing dull and obvious and not as, “impossible,” as Molly assumed. 

 

In his head, John was saying more and more, rambling useless and bitter, voice and memory tainted with the frustration and illness of Sherlock’s mentality. Sherlock escaped, and hated himself when he called Molly ‘John’ for selfish reasons. 

 

Afterward, Molly followed Sherlock out of the cellar room and stopped him in an unlit hall. 

 

“I am sorry, Sherlock,” said Molly, “About… Well, I’m sorry.”

 

*

 

He slept more, because it passed the time.

 

At night the words fell like bombs, burning the city and bringing whole buildings to the ground.

 

Sherlock lay beneath his sheets, mattress too soft and pillow too morphed to be comfortable. Every police siren was replaced with memories of conversations, and behind his eyelids burned the image of Him, hair tousled and chest bare, smiling in bed beside Sherlock, sun rising over bronzed skin. 

 

Sometimes Sherlock slept and the image didn’t fade, but morphed into desired intentions and moments he wishes were memories rather than fantasies. Tastes and sensations, all fictional, became Bible truths inside the worship of his highly functioning mind. Lips, teeth, skin beneath tongue and fingers intertwined; they can be true, he thought, if I believe hard enough. 

 

He slept well on those nights. 

 

*

 

Sherlock tapped his foot against the floor of Mycroft’s car and counted the lampposts across the window. He imagined each one was a punch to his brother’s body, and the half-moons cutting into his fist’s palm almost made it realistic. 

 

“I only ever do what I feel is in your best interests.”

 

Sherlock laughed; a single, choked burst bubbling from the depths of his chest. “And keeping something like this from me was in my best interests, was it?”

 

Mycroft had the nerve to look shameless. Sherlock hoped Anthea was hiding a gun, because otherwise there would soon be nothing keeping him from digging his fingers into the man’s throat. 

 

Actually, he hoped she didn’t.

 

A phone buzzed, and instead of answering Sherlock, Mycroft pulled it out of his pocket and spent a few minutes typing out a conversation with a stranger some miles of digital code away. Sherlock used the time as an opportunity to calm down. It didn’t work. 

 

“If I had told you, you would have come home - ”

 

“Yes, exactly.”

 

“And if you had, then Moriarty’s network would still be growing, spawning in the dark corners I cannot reach. It was for the greater good. Besides, imagine how you would have felt if you letMoriarty’s network go for the sake of a… _goldfish_. What would your abandoning the endeavour have achieved?”

 

Sherlock’s eyes flashed red when he failed to produce a logical answer to the rational question. “You can drop me off here,” said Sherlock, blind to the view out of the window.

 

“No, I have - ”

 

“Mycroft, let me out of the _fucking_ car.”

 

Mycroft stopped the car and Sherlock spent the next four hours sat in an alleyway somewhere, eyes closed as he tried to crush the angry urges crawling under his skin.

 

A week later, Sherlock was informed his brother had signed him up for _counselling_.

 

*

 

_The water trickles through his tangled hair, lukewarm but clean, and Sherlock sighs in satisfaction as the desert dirts and sands are washed from his skin._

 

_Blood mixes with brown in the water circling the drain, but Sherlock keeps his eyes towards the clear spurting forth from above him._

 

_“You know,” says John, finger tracing the line of a cut spread across the wings of Sherlock’s shoulder blades, “There is something attractive about you like this; all rough and beat up, a manly kind of strong.”_

 

_“Just like this?” grins Sherlock, keeping his eyes closed._

 

_The fingers trace one of the scars along his back, moving slowly as they go round, following the pull of ribs against skin and bumps of stomach muscle._

 

_“Just like always,” John says, breath ghosting against Sherlock’s lips._

 

_*_

 

“I won’t go,” he snapped, storming into the building with disregard for the glares coming from elderly gentlemen with their newspapers and gins and reading glasses. 

 

Mycroft fit right in, only he folded the newspaper in his hands upon Sherlock’s arrival and stood. He opened an arm to lead his brother towards the private offices, back straight and chin firm. Sherlock stayed stood in the centre of the silent hall, eyes full of too much sentiment. 

 

“I won’t go, and you can’t make me.” 

 

He smashed a bottle of gin on the floor before leaving, _to make a point, dammit_ , and the glass shattered across the wood and rugs in teasing shards of threatening harmlessness. Sherlock walked out with his head held high, feet crunching behind him. 

 

*

 

The space beside the grave was now vacated, headstone announcing the resting place of _Sherlock Holmes_ removed and whittled down to spare materials. 

 

Sherlock stared down at the grass, hands tucked into his pockets and thoughts focusing on one thing: the headstone which remained seemed so _lonely_.

 

*

 

_Sherlock stares out at the ocean. Behind him an ancient temple crumbles, as it has for centuries now, caught only in the few photographs of visiting tourists. Ahead, the sun sets, burning the horizon orange and red and yellow._

 

_“Do you remember me?” he asks the shadowless being beside him._

 

_“I think so,” says the ghost, hand coming to rest over Sherlock’s, “I hope so.”_

 

*

 

“They told me there would be no side effects.”

 

Rain slid down the window, transforming the grey afternoon into webs of contrasting light. Sherlock heard the soft thump of feet against carpet. “I assume there have been, then. Although, I have to say, if all they’re doing is calming your… irritability, then I believe such results are the _aim_ \- ”

 

“That’s not it.” Sherlock’s fingernails dug into the leather. 

 

Mycroft was silent. Sherlock lashed out, and the plastic bottle hit the wall with a pathetic slap, bouncing off and rolling to a stop at the elder Holmes’ feet. Sherlock had been a flicker of movement, returning back to his original statuesque composure within breaths. 

 

The bottle lay on the floor, label up, and Mycroft frowned at the bolded information. “You’ve switched your medication.” 

 

Sherlock scoffed, but it lacked heart. “Obviously.” The silence was tense, Sherlock refusing to elaborate.

 

“Ah,” said Mycroft, “Not your idea. You went to see the therapist.”

 

“Shut up. Stop pretending like you didn’t know already.” 

 

“I will have you know, Sherlock, that I am attempting to provide you with the privacy you need in your time of… distress.”

 

“Distress? Mycroft, I’m going - ”

 

“Going what?” Mycroft held an air of superiority which masked the worry consuming even the Ice Man. “Going mad, brother dear?”

 

*

 

“They never really helped me, either,” said John. The bed failed to dip as he sat down beside the detective. 

 

Sherlock twirled the bottle of Paroxetine in his fingers. “They give me you.”

 

“You had me long before you had those.”

 

“If I - ” Sherlock looked towards his friend. John was so solid, so alive that he cast a shadow, and even the consulting detective failed to produce evidence of the doctor’s inexistence. “If I stop taking them now, then it might take you away from me again. Like when I first came back, when I first found out.”

 

“I’m not going anywhere.” John, skin ethereal in the nighttime, rested his head on Sherlock’s shoulder. Sherlock’s eyes closed with the reassuring weight, and he allowed his head to drop and pillow on John’s hair. “I promise,” whispered John.

 

*

 

They kept talking, and Sherlock kept his statue firm in hopes of fooling them. It kind of worked, but did little to satisfy the crawling beneath his skin. He pushed himself up from the chair and looked towards the cobweb of a case spread across the walls, the failing distraction occupying his shortening days. His movements were loud in the room as he stalked forward, over the coffee table and onto the sofa. 

 

“So, did you find it eventually? Your lottery ticket?”

 

His mother seemed surprised by the sudden movement, but not suspicious, at least. 

 

“Oh, well, yes, thank goodness, we caught the coach on time after all. We managed to see St Pauls, the tower, but they weren’t letting anyone into parliament - some big debate going on.”

 

Sherlock frowned, his mind registering somewhere the peculiarity. He turned away from the wall and his parents both, mind filtering through clues and connections with a fresh vivacity. But when he saw John across the room, leant against the doorway, arms crossed over his chest and bemused smile on his mouth, any road that may have been lain was struck from his brain, all thoughts reduced to a mix of _thank God_ and _God, not now._

 

“Well,” Sherlock announced, interrupting his mother, “Time for you to go!”

 

“Oh, really?” 

 

“Yes.” Sherlock coerced his parents up from the sofa, trying to ignore the light chuckling coming from the other side of the room. They couldn’t know he was here. 

 

“Well, we’re in town until Sunday, remember,” she went on, and Sherlock kept nodding and saying yes and making promises to the words she kept saying until both his mother and father were out of the door. Once it was closed, he let his head fall against the wood with a soft thump, and the relaxed atmosphere hovering across the room went tense. 

 

“Your parents seem nice,” said John, cautious in his lack of movement. 

 

Sherlock pressed his tongue against his teeth as he tried to think. “You’ve never showed when other people have been around before.”

 

“You’ve never needed me when others have been around before.” 

 

“I always need you.”

 

John’s feet were soft on the floor, but solid in their steps. “You’ve become awfully sentimental in your grief,” murmured John from a few inches away. 

 

Sherlock crushed his eyes shut and tried not to hate that his own mind was seeping into his creation of John. The ghost crept forward and slid one hand along Sherlock’s back, turning them together until their foreheads were pressed together. “If you always need me, then I suppose I’ll always be around.”

 

*

 

John kept to his word. Sherlock hated it and loved it, and hated that he loved it.

 

*

 

The sun was rising and Sherlock hadn’t slept again. John was beside him in bed, the inches of sheets between them permanent and teasing, and the only thing remaining of Sherlock’s sanity. John’s fingers traced the individual lines of Sherlock’s ribs, and Sherlock kept his arms behind his head, eyes hooked on John’s. 

 

“Remember Baskerville?”

 

John hummed. “Of course.” 

 

Sherlock was silent, and John, obviously, read between the lines. His fingers halted and his bones tightened. He leant up until he was hovering above Sherlock’s face. 

 

“Are you being drugged, Sherlock?” asked John. 

 

The denial he’d expected never came. 

 

“Trust your senses, Sherlock, the evidence of your own eyes.” John leant down and pressed his mouth against Sherlock’s cheek. Warmth bloomed over the skin, and John left a steady trail of kisses down the ivory skin. “I’m right here,” murmured John over his heart. 

 

Somewhere along the way, Sherlock closed his eyes, and time melted. 

 

*

 

“I hear you have stopped going to your appointments.”

 

Sherlock stared at the space above John’s chair, and Mycroft lost his patience. 

 

“At least tell me you are still taking your medication.”

 

“It wasn’t doing anything for me.”

 

“Sherlock - ” The elder Holmes stopped short, because Sherlock had turned to him, and he was _broken_ : eyes red rimmed, mouth tense and hair drooping with untamed length. 

 

“He’s here whether I take them or not.”

 

“Who?” Mycroft frowned, eyebrows creasing at the centre. “Sherlock, don’t be abstract, it doesn’t become you.”

 

Instead of answering Sherlock looked towards John’s chair, half scared, half worshiping. 

 

Mycroft went cold inside. 

 

*

 

“He wouldn’t want this for you,” Molly murmured, eyes full of tears. She should be crying for John, thought Sherlock, not me, but then time had passed, and they couldn’t remember the way he looked when the lamplight shone on his hair. Not like he could.

 

From the fireplace, John grimaced in sympathy, understanding of the frustration coursing through Sherlock’s veins. His presence caged the anger, at least, although it still writhed beneath the top layer of his skin. 

 

Sherlock met Molly’s eyes. “You don’t understand, but that’s okay, very few people do.”

 

Molly mouth fell, and the wrinkles around her eyes deepened. “Sherlock - ”

 

“I know _exactly_ what he wants for me.”

 

Molly flinched back, and left soon after, when Sherlock refused to speak any further. 

 

*

 

The room shook, or that might have been his body. His palms bled, his fists pushing nails into skin. The edges of his vision blurred and reddened, tainting the world with his emotions. By the window John was glaring, another outlet for the maddened and irrational rage, so unlike the reality of what the doctor should be. Mycroft stood in the doorway, watching Sherlock with a mixture of concern, caution and out right fear. 

 

“You did this to me,” Sherlock growled, adrenaline growing, “ _You_.”

 

Sherlock pounced, too quick for his brother to move, and then his hands were around Mycroft’s neck, reddened nails digging into skin and breath yielding beneath force. Mycroft’s hands scrambled at Sherlock’s, to no avail. 

 

At some point the sound of choking grated against the resolve toughening his anger, and Sherlock’s hands loosened. “How could you?” he whimpered, as his nails scraped along his brother’s neck and fingers wrapped into the torn suit collar, “How could you?”

 

*

 

The bruises were prominent on his skin the next time Mycroft visited. John smirked at the sight, and that smile killed something inside Sherlock a little more. 

 

“I had no idea it was this bad,” said Mycroft into the tea cup, drink untouched other than the rhythmic stirring of the spoon. 

 

Sherlock kept his eyes trained on John, as though if he moved his eyes away the malicious man might, in the few seconds, grab a knife from the kitchen and drive it into the soft spot at the back of Mycroft’s head. 

 

“I see him,” admitted Sherlock, “All the time.” 

 

Mycroft nodded, as though he _understood_. 

 

“He’s changing.” 

 

“What do you mean?”

 

Sherlock risked it, and met Mycroft’s calculating gaze. “He’s becoming me.”

 

*

 

“You need to give him a case,” said the tone of the elder Holmes, fuzzy through the phone speaker. 

 

Lestrade frowned and turned away from the crowding of police inside the yellow tape. “What do you mean, I thought you said he was working on some big terrorist thing already?”

 

“I’m sure he can handle both. In fact, I’m quite sure he needs them.”

 

*

 

“Thank you.” 

 

Sherlock was so consumed by the murder scene beneath him that you may have almost missed him speaking, but Lestrade, being close beside the man, heard the words with clarity. 

 

“You okay?” asked Lestrade.

 

Sherlock flinched at something invisible, frowned, closed his magnifier with a sharp clip and rose from the ground with a kurt, “fine”. 

 

Lestrade followed. It hadn’t taken much at first glance to discern the reasons for Mycroft’s distress, but the longer and closer Lestrade looked, the more prominent each aspect of decay grew. 

 

“I’ll be in touch,” said Sherlock with a flourish, and Lestrade let him go.

 

*

 

“I can’t do this anymore,” said Sherlock. 

 

Mycroft’s eyebrows rose. “Oh, and what would this be, then?”

 

“This.” Sherlock gestured between them. “Pretending we’re brothers, pretending like there is any sort of debt owed to each other at all.”

 

Downstairs, Mrs Hudson could be heard clattering about, making tea for the two Holmes boys and herself. Sherlock sat, hoping Mycroft would be gone before getting a chance to drink it. John hovered beside him, glaring, and hoping to rip Mycroft’s throat out. 

 

The silence stayed until Mrs Hudson had handed the hot tea to each boy, and had then left. Mycroft drank his tea this time. 

 

“What would you suggest?”

 

“You are capable of keeping your distance from every other expendable member in your service,” Sherlock pointed out, “I would be grateful for the same privilege.” 

 

“But you are not expendable.” 

 

“I might as well be.”

 

Mycroft bent his head to one side, and Sherlock glared at a stain on the carpet. 

 

“I need a job, Mycroft… Please.” 

 

Mycroft considered his brother. “And if I am to think of you as little more than another ‘expendable’ _minion_ of mine, why should I grant you this request?”

 

“It’s one or the other, Mycroft, you can’t pick and choose.”

 

“Then I choose your life.” 

 

Sherlock realised he lacked the space to hate his brother further, so let the emotion dissolve into the solution of his parts. 

 

Mycroft stopped at the doorway on his way out. “You know, Sherlock, your loss would break my heart.” 

 

Sherlock clenched his jaw and bit out the demand he had worked so hard to crush. “Don’t ever come back, Mycroft.” 

 

*

 

The last time Sherlock saw John, the soldier was himself again, all anger dissolved along with he fear. There was peace in the opportunity of self-annihilation. 

 

“If you do this,” John pointed out, “Then thousands will die with you.”

 

“But I’ll be with you.”

 

“And I’ll hate you, and you know it.” Sherlock met John’s clear eyes, and John shook his head softly. “It’s only the truth.” 

 

Sherlock blinked and looked back down at the bomb. The tube carriage was consumed with fluorescent light, all too bright, ironic against the death wrapped wires tucked throughout the construction. The numbers ticked downwards, teasing their own potential. 

 

“Do you even remember me?”

 

“Yes, of course I do. I’m watching you right now, I know it.” 

 

Sherlock’s eyebrows fell. “You’re not you?”

 

“You’ve always known that. I’m not John, I’m you.”

 

With his fingers hovering by the off switch, Sherlock looked towards the perfect details in John’s face: bright eyes, kind smile, soft hair, everything so simple, everything so loveable. “Can you be him, just once more before I do this?”

 

John smiled and nodded. He moved forward and leaned down beside Sherlock, stretching over the gap in the floor so that he could press their foreheads together. He smoothed his lips against Sherlock’s cheekbones, then the corner of his mouth, until pressing into a chaste kiss. He kept close as he nudged Sherlock into flicking the switch. 

 

“One day you’ll come back to me, and we can kiss like real people do,” smiled John, comforted and finally resting in peace, “but in the meantime, you should live.”

 

*

 

“You wanted a job,” said Mycroft through the phone, “I have one.”

 

“What is it?”

 

“MI6, Russia. Nothing particularly taxing…”

 

“Oh, really?”

 

“However,” Mycroft took a deep, reluctant breath through the phone, “I do believe it will prove fatal within six months.”

 

Sherlock had been expecting it, but hadn’t expected the peace that settled with his resolution. The rain was the same, crawling against the same window, patter filling the same silent space of an empty 221B, but everything was different now. The echoes held promise of an ending to the tunnel. 

 

Mycroft mistook Sherlock’s silence for indecision. “You wanted to be expendable,” he pointed out. 

 

Sherlock smiled when he answered. “Thank you, but I respectfully decline your kind offer.”

 

*

 

Sherlock lived. 

 

Years later, after crimes and mysteries, after bees and cottages, John kept to his word. 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thoughts are greatly appreciated, meanwhile [I am going to shamelessly self promote my tumblr ;) ](http://tzeliot.tumblr.com/).
> 
> Thank you for reading!


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